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brOODING AT MY desk in Manhattan North Homicide after my meeting at headquarters, I had to admit I saw Celeste Cantor’s point. But she was the one who’d brought this case to me, and now it looked like the real deal. Not just a rumor or conspiracy theory.

In the meantime, I had work to do as the acting supervisor, which took me away from my own cases. It also reminded me why I’d never been interested in being promoted. I was sick of reading and approving other people’s boring reports. I wanted to focus on my own boring reports.

I scrutinized the information Walter Jackson had provided. It looked like Richard Deason had run the most multiethnic crew to ever operate in New York. His list of associates included males and females, whites, Hispanics, and Black people. Deason had used a legitimate CPA for his personal finances, who claimed that his client told him he was a “venture capitalist.” I always thought every drug dealer was some form of venture capitalist.

No matter what else I was discovering about Deason, I always circled back around to his son, Antonio. My imagination ran a little wild when I envisioned what he would look like now. I assumed he’d be a tough-looking, muscle-bound thug. In reality, his Florida driver’s license and his identification card from the University of Miami both showed a good-looking, smiling young man with longish hair. But both were at least five years old. I had almost no up-to-date information on him.

Walter Jackson shuffled over to my desk. The way he sat in the chair told me he had something important he wanted to talk about. When he didn’t come up with a pun right away, I knew it had to be serious.

I said, “What’s troubling you, big guy?”

“I’ve been helping Rob on the case he’s working with Terri Hernandez. Most of the reports and info have been going through Terri first. I saw something unusual and looked up the case file.”

“Please don’t tell me Trilling did something to screw up one of Terri’s cases. He’d have a better chance of survival if he told the commissioner to kiss his butt.”

Walter chuckled. “No, nothing like that. They’ve been doing surveillance of that gang up in the Bronx. Looks like someone in the group is good for a couple of homicides at least.”

“So what’s got you worked up?”

“They have an informant inside the group who gives them pretty good intelligence about who comes and goes from the warehouse they call their headquarters, any outsiders they’re setting up a meet with.”

“Okay. So they should be able to figure out who’s good for the homicides by looking at the members of the gang and their associates, right?”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking. So I ran thorough backgrounds on everyone mentioned in their reports.” He paused and looked at me.

“Why am I starting to feel this has something to do with me?”

Walter continued. “There’s a guy the informant mentioned, someone Trilling hasn’t heard him talk about before. I can’t find background on the name at all. The informant called him Little D.” Walter shrugged his broad shoulders. “He’s a potential new supplier—meeting with the gang tomorrow to talk business. Trilling and Hernandez are planning to convince the informant to wear a transmitter.”

“Little D … as in little Deason? Antonio Deason?”

“Informant said he moved up here not too long ago. From Miami.”